Dream Diary: We Last Few

on February 14, 2013

I split the difference on today’s dream, gang. I had a really unsettling one that I decided would throw this Dream Diary feature all out of whack if I shared it this early, and I also have one from when I was about eight years old that’s only a little weird and spooky.

Here’s a nightmare from the middle ground.

It’s the end of the world. Most of Earth is deserted, dead. I remember seeing cars parked in — or maybe wrecks littering? — the field in a football stadium. Now I am on a ruined city street: looters sporadically pierce the silence, both alone and in small groups. Scott is with me, and I’m furious that these scavengers are all that’s left of humanity.

We come upon a man breaking the window of an electronics store. He’s going to steal a television, even though there hasn’t been signal in months. I try to get in front of him as he pushes past me, to clothesline him, but I’m weak, powerless. I can’t lift my arms. I can’t open my eyes fully.

The scene changes. I’ve been unconscious, and now wake. Have I been kidnapped? I lie diagonal on the floor of some white box apartment. In the room, there juts the lip of an extended windowsill, coming out of the wall, more than a couple feet wide. Reclining on this lip is a girl who looks a little like Linda Blair from The Exorcist, in the same white nightdress, about the same age. She hisses at me, open-mouthed, like a cat. I cannot stand up or move. I blink to look away, to will myself out of this room.

The scene doesn’t change. I’m still lying on the carpeted floor. In a far corner now, I see light dancing — a TV on, perhaps a small fire in the room. Then I notice the girl has changed. Now she is this shrieking, white-haired thing with pinhole eyes and the wrinkles and complexion of a bleached, dried apple doll. She stares and stares, mouth agape. I force myself awake.

Gemji

Sweet fuck I can see the thing you describe. Might be an easy representation of which we think is frightening: something that is human-ish but not. Something close….but off

darkmayo

translate that dried apple doll girl into a photo or drawing and you would have some delightful nightmare fuel.

John

Uh, dang, Kris. Scary stuff. This is my first time commenting on any of your works, and I've been reading for about 5 years now. You create some truly original work. I was sad to see Starslip end, but you wrapped it up in a satisfying way. Chainsawsuit is a daily for me, and I'm really grooving on Broodhollow now. You are building a very creepy dish of pasta, one delightful ingredient at a time, to my Lovecraftian pleasure. Kudos, sir. Now serve me a mashup of Brood and Blams! :)

Sub3rDuck

Creepy as hell. I love it.

NovaeDeArx

I rarely have nightmares, probably less than five or six in my entire life.

The few that I have had, however, are… Memorable. I'll share a few.

The world has ended. The view is a blasted cityscape, with all the skyscrapers enveloped in a grayish rot. The people are not dead, but similarly encased in the gray mold. What were once inhabitants are now shambling mounds of rotting flesh, hidden beneath the formless gray. They seek each other out in order to violate each other, either by violence or by other means that do not need to be elucidated here. I am forced to watch for far too long before awaking.

I am maybe four years old; this is my first dream I can remember. I am ice skating across a frozen pond when the ice begins to give way, falling far down into an incredibly deep space that I can just barely see the bottom of. I have just enough time to feel the deep cold around me before the ice below me falls, carrying me with it far into the blackness. I drown, only awaking after feeling myself die under the water. Decades later, I can still remember the feelings of suffocation, terror and being utterly alone when I die.

I am in a hotel room. My friends are all involved in a bloody, orgiastic display whilst wearing brown paper bags over their heads. I leave the room, only to find myself in a hallway that has been clearly given to a wet rot for years. There are only two or three dim lights flickering in the long hallway, all lighting the figure of a pale woman with black hair covering all of her face as she slowly approaches me. I can feel the terrifying corruption coming from her, but am unable to escape. She reaches me, and I can feel myself being changed into whatever the people in my room have become. I am sickness, plague and terrifyingly in love with what I have become. I wake up genuinely nauseated at the joy I felt in becoming that… Thing.

Thanks for reminding me.

broodbro

Fuel for my nightmares so I can wright them down because I usaully do not nightmares or well any dreams for that matter they are rare occasions and I usaully forget them straight away I feel weird since everyone else has CRAZY nightmares.

REVOLVER_KAZ

I've had dreams where I can't open my eyes fully either. And when I finally do force them open, I wake up.

Going Insane

I have those all the time!

Bret

I used to think people made this stuff up. I never remember my dreams…I must have them, but I don't remember anything when I wake up. I just assumed that everyone was the same and people who recounted vivid dreams were telling tall tales.

Now, after a depressingly large number of years on this earth, I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority. Whilst I don't want nightmares and sleep paralysis (my sympathies, Kris), it would be nice to experience some vivid dreams and at least see what they are like.

broodbro

Same hear but to be honest I don't want to have them I mean SCARY!!!

AckAckAck

You should be glad you don't remember your dreams. People with vivid memories like us can get stressed or scared to do something just because of a dream.

Mic

And I just read this at 1:22 am before bed. God dammit

Michael M.

I have had too many dreams in which I am too weak to stand and walk for more than a few steps, as if the gravity is too strong, while everyone else around me seems utterly unaffected. Fortunately those are not often outright nightmares, and it is usually just embarrassing or frustrating rather than terrifying.

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I split the difference on today’s dream, gang. I had a really unsettling one